Directional stick problem in HSF2: AE

What’s baffling about this is that it’s only apparent with one game. In SFAC, 3S works with no issues. Menus can be navigated and characters are fully controllable. But on the main menu that lets you choose the game, I have to hold the stick to the right to get to HSF2 otherwise it bounces back to the left, and when trying to play the game, the character constantly jumps leftward, as if the up-left direction is being held. The menu for that game also has problems; I can’t use up or down to move to a different option, instead I can only use left or right, which always moves the cursor up (I’m going to assume the game was designed to support either axis for menu navigation).

I use the 2P controller port to prevent any further damage to the first port I think had been previously caused by stick usage. It’s an A-series solderless hack with no disconnected wires. I know that when you daisy-chain the ground then something happens to one or some of the other wires, results like this often occur. But if non-HSF2 games work properly then I know it can’t be that. The stick works flawlessly on the PC with a USB converter, and Guilty Gear on PS2 also functions as if nothing is wrong.

Thanks for any help.

Betcha that if you compare the way the stick looks in the control panel applet with that converter vs the way a pad looks, you’ll see the left analog as jammed in the upper left.

You know, after I posted that I opened the stick to see if any contact was being made with what’s left of the analog sticks (basically some metal prongs) but they seemed fine. And if some invisible factor was causing analog issues, I figure it would’ve applied to all games equally.

Either way, I managed to fix the problem but I’m not sure of what I did. Some wires were close to the analog sticks so I just moved them around a bit. They’re still so close to the analog components that I have no idea why it’s any different now. Would some kind of interference be possible because of close proximity?

Just wondering, in the control panel thing, what should be I looking for exactly? Under the basic properties for this stick, the joystick seemed centered. When I run the calibration wizard, the “axis calibration” step shows the icon in the top left like you described.

http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stickaxisrx6.jpg